I think I'd rather have Serra Angel over Radiant Archangel the majority of the time. You need another flying creature for them to be even, and then 2 for the archangel to outpace Serra Angel. But if you already have 2 flying creatures in play you are often times already winning and the Archangel becomes win more. You absolutely can't play Archangel in random white decks without many fliers, because as a 3/3 it's pretty garbage. Whereas, I can see playing Serra Angel in many random white decks and still being decent.
I see people talk about how there are too many dead cards in 1 on 1, and this really help alleviate that issue. When there are cards that neither player want, they just end up getting naturally burned, so I find that you don't need to change your cube really at all for this. Also I think the power level in pancake drafting is generally more comparable to a proper draft than something like rochester.
Lifegain matters is always going to be an archetype that I abstain from adding to cube, no matter how much support it gets. It is intrinsically much better against certain decks where gaining life in itself is a reward (i.e aggressive strategies). I don't like to have a match up that is so polarizing that it feels hopeless.
Some very awesome +1/+1 counter support revealed today!
Conclave Mentor is exactly the type of card I have always been hoping to get for this deck. A really solid ability coming in on a body that is not bad, a 2/2 for 2 that gains you life on death. And we also got...
Wildwood Scourge, a strictly better Ivy Elemental that really synergizes with +1/+1 counter cards. There are so many cards that this goes well with.
I think given these cards I am finally convinced enough to really commit to making GWr have a +1/+1 counter theme. I will be making my 3 selesnya cards: Conclave Mentor Pledge of Unity - Surprisingly great card Good-fortune Unicorn
Those three are all really solid cards that heavily support the +1/+1 counter deck. The deck still has the issue of being a bit susceptible to removal unfortunately, but I think there is finally enough reason to play the deck.
Aside from these cards, I haven't been excited about too much from this set.
The 2/2 red prowess guy will be replacing goblin cratermaker, I will be finding a spot for Quiron Dryad, I may replace Anticipate with Tidal Whale, and I may find a spot for Vryn Wingmare, which is okay but gets absolutely stonewalled by 1/1 fliers and doesn't have the same strength in peasant where it doesn't slow down wraths.
Yeah the tri-land, vivid land, bounce land, signet combo is bound to lead to multicolor good stuff decks being the best option, especially if aggro isn't super heavily supported. Signets especially really enable greedy decks, which is why I'm not a fan of them. Vivid lands also are a bit egregious with how easily they can enable multi-color decks.
I have watched a couple drafts of Amaz's cube, and I wouldn't say it's bad, but I would say it's quite different from what I'm going for, and agree that it looks more similar to an "unrefined" peasant cube list. I definitely agree that there are way too many multi-color cards, but he says that he likes them so it's whatever. This is very much a cube that leans much more heavily on the "value first" end of the spectrum rather than the "tempo first" end, which is another reason multi-pile greed piles end up being so good, it allows you to play all the best value cards. I do love me doing drafts like that sometimes, but it's not something I regularly want.
Yeah I think harpy is generally just too slow for my cube at least. And dimir is a pretty stacked guild so I think that makes it even rarer for it to appear in peoples cubes.
Comparing it to Crystal Shard, it costs double the mana to use and a life each time. And one of the strongest things about Crystal Shard is that it puts such a tax on your opponent, they essentially have to be keeping up mana or their guys are going to be bounced. Plus crystal shard can be used at instant speed to save a creature from removal.
Yeah fixing doesn't change anything fundamentally about how I feel like peasant games should play it, it just allows players to actually play their spells. A wrath on the other hand would force people to change their play patterns for example. And lands are absolutely printed at rare because of money reasons.
As for aggro, I think it is very viable, you just need to make sure to support it properly. Mono-color is definitely viable as long as you have enough density of 1 and 2 drops in the colors you want to support. However, dual color aggro throws out a lot of the benefits of aggro if you don't have good fixing. The strength of aggro comes from consistency and efficiency, you get to play your 1 and 2 drops out early and start beating down right away. It gets a lot worse if you don't have one of your colors and you miss out on being able to play a one drop on turn one.
Yeah personally, I think having 3-4 land cycles at 360-400 card range is a good idea, it just gives people a much better chance of getting the fixing they need, and people never really have problems getting playables in cube anyway.
I've been testing Fetches with no duals/shocks, and they have been about what I had expect. Kinda nice for random things like Delve, Escape and Shuffling, but in all honesty, worse than any of the other rare cycles I've tried (painlands, checklands, fastlands). This is because they can only get one of the colors, which can make it a lot worse in a 3 or 4 color deck.
I think I will trade out the fetches for shock lands, as they just provide better fixing, and don't require people to have to shuffle.
I've added rare lands to my cube and I'm very happy with it. I was just always so frustrated with the mana fixing coming into play tapped and being so bad in aggressive decks. In the end I want decks to be able to play their cards on curve and rare fixing has allowed for that to be the case.
I'm mostly just avoiding the duals+fetches combo and anything that feels like it has to be rare, like man lands. Duals+Fetches I think is just too powerful for peasant, and would lead to people pretty much always first picking a dual or fetch.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/haheho/m21_peasant_cube_set_review_white/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/hb0xhc/m21_peasant_cube_set_review_blue/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/hbpa41/m21_peasant_cube_set_review_black/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/hc6m0t/m21_peasant_cube_set_review_red/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/hddnvv/m21_peasant_cube_set_review_green/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/heinj7/m21_peasant_cube_set_review_multicolor_and_wrap_up/
Give em a read if you want and let me know what you think!
https://joost.vunderink.net/blog/2013/03/21/pancake-draft-cube-draft-for-two-players/
I see people talk about how there are too many dead cards in 1 on 1, and this really help alleviate that issue. When there are cards that neither player want, they just end up getting naturally burned, so I find that you don't need to change your cube really at all for this. Also I think the power level in pancake drafting is generally more comparable to a proper draft than something like rochester.
Conclave Mentor is exactly the type of card I have always been hoping to get for this deck. A really solid ability coming in on a body that is not bad, a 2/2 for 2 that gains you life on death. And we also got...
Wildwood Scourge, a strictly better Ivy Elemental that really synergizes with +1/+1 counter cards. There are so many cards that this goes well with.
I think given these cards I am finally convinced enough to really commit to making GWr have a +1/+1 counter theme. I will be making my 3 selesnya cards:
Conclave Mentor
Pledge of Unity - Surprisingly great card
Good-fortune Unicorn
Those three are all really solid cards that heavily support the +1/+1 counter deck. The deck still has the issue of being a bit susceptible to removal unfortunately, but I think there is finally enough reason to play the deck.
Aside from these cards, I haven't been excited about too much from this set.
The 2/2 red prowess guy will be replacing goblin cratermaker, I will be finding a spot for Quiron Dryad, I may replace Anticipate with Tidal Whale, and I may find a spot for Vryn Wingmare, which is okay but gets absolutely stonewalled by 1/1 fliers and doesn't have the same strength in peasant where it doesn't slow down wraths.
I have watched a couple drafts of Amaz's cube, and I wouldn't say it's bad, but I would say it's quite different from what I'm going for, and agree that it looks more similar to an "unrefined" peasant cube list. I definitely agree that there are way too many multi-color cards, but he says that he likes them so it's whatever. This is very much a cube that leans much more heavily on the "value first" end of the spectrum rather than the "tempo first" end, which is another reason multi-pile greed piles end up being so good, it allows you to play all the best value cards. I do love me doing drafts like that sometimes, but it's not something I regularly want.
Comparing it to Crystal Shard, it costs double the mana to use and a life each time. And one of the strongest things about Crystal Shard is that it puts such a tax on your opponent, they essentially have to be keeping up mana or their guys are going to be bounced. Plus crystal shard can be used at instant speed to save a creature from removal.
As for aggro, I think it is very viable, you just need to make sure to support it properly. Mono-color is definitely viable as long as you have enough density of 1 and 2 drops in the colors you want to support. However, dual color aggro throws out a lot of the benefits of aggro if you don't have good fixing. The strength of aggro comes from consistency and efficiency, you get to play your 1 and 2 drops out early and start beating down right away. It gets a lot worse if you don't have one of your colors and you miss out on being able to play a one drop on turn one.
I've been testing Fetches with no duals/shocks, and they have been about what I had expect. Kinda nice for random things like Delve, Escape and Shuffling, but in all honesty, worse than any of the other rare cycles I've tried (painlands, checklands, fastlands). This is because they can only get one of the colors, which can make it a lot worse in a 3 or 4 color deck.
I think I will trade out the fetches for shock lands, as they just provide better fixing, and don't require people to have to shuffle.
I'm mostly just avoiding the duals+fetches combo and anything that feels like it has to be rare, like man lands. Duals+Fetches I think is just too powerful for peasant, and would lead to people pretty much always first picking a dual or fetch.